Artificial Eden: Superficial Kingdoms Poem by DM W

PROLOGUE -

Dropped from the eternal realms, submitted to time and death, human beings continue to believe in their own separateness and in the present. Modern life seems to nourish and inflate the spectacular; distracting us from developing ourselves emotionally and spiritually. Only by means of great suffering can we, as individuals, liberate ourselves from the control of time and return to eternity, leave darkness and return to light.

SUPERFICIAL KINGDOMS

' Be on your guard against all kinds of greed. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions (The Bible)

So many distractions;
More Idols than Realities.
Diminished awareness
More illusions than allusions
To symbols and archetypes
From a vast, cultural past;
Which seems to have been forgotten
Which seems to have been replaced
By endless sounds and images
Crammed full of tension, conflict and fear
Colourful but caustic;
Loud, diffuse and bright.

Behind this shrieking of image and sound
A stark, empty silence
Is all that remains
Of a cultural past
Imperious perhaps,
But organic, rich
And expansive.

From African origins
To Ancient Greece and Rome;
From the Eastern wisdom
Of Tibetan monks
To Sufi mystics
Transcending space and time;
From great biblical scribes
To prophets and priests;
From lofty Renaissance
To Romantic ideal.

Claustrophobic culture;
Cracked up creeds and rank confusion.
Iconic Christ is purely a cipher;
For current market needs and false desires.
Little better than a bride stripped bare;
Little better than a cartoon character;
Little better than, ' Reality T.V'
Crudely sponsored by Coca Cola

Claustrophobic culture;
No time to pause or catch one's breath
The chaos is all around; Of images:
Images recycled and repeated.
Give us our daily bread, we pray;
Fast food (KFC) : Nike trainers
MP3 players; DVDS
Big Macs; 7UP; Starbucks:

' Share coffee, community, camaraderie; connection! '

Rolex watches; computer games
high tech gadgets and designer jeans;
A plethora of God and Shopping channels
An advertiser's glimpse of Heaven.
What's the ‘genuine' article?
What's real or make believe?

Interactive TV; phone in surveys;
Songs, ads and self help manuals
Which implore us to find ourselves;
To unlock the door to ‘ perfect' peace.
The real is no longer what it used to be;
The image now exceeds the reality;
The real is now an official fiction;
The real has disappeared from view.

Txt culture of interruption;
Human dialogue defunct.
It's like the last crazed act
Of a malnourished tribe.

' Txt me; txt me; please txt me
I'm independent
Yet always in demand
Busy but not tied down
So txt me; please txt me;
And I'll get back to you later.'

Corporate interest culture
Of rampant materialism;
Born without conscience
Driven by the American Dream

Look at all the phony people!
Where do they all come from?
Look at all the phony people!
Where do they all belong?

These days Beauty is created by prosthetics
Urban beauty by landscape surgery
Opinion by opinion poll surgery.
Genetic research offers a perverse kind of progress;
Plastic surgery for the whole human species.
And the birth of purified ‘ brave new' beings
Like designer brands made to impress:
Cute carbon copy; blue print babies.

An unrelenting hedonism
Comes sweeping into view:
The cult of vain celebrity
Of cut price kings & anorexic queens.

Fake plastic trees and
De rigueur designs adorn
The palatial ‘ pleasure domes'
Of the nouveau riche.
Their status assumes
A warped normality
As they seem to embody
Everything we'd like to be

Our fascination
With their lifestyles
May sell millions
of magazines
But it expresses
A deep sense of absence
As they seem to live out
A thousand dreams for us

Superficial saturation of T.V;
Private lives going public
In titillating talk shows;
Horrors are regurgitated
And sanitised in 24 hour

News programmes & documentaries.
Forced extroversion of our interior lives:
No halo of private protection surrounds us.
The end of intimacy and inner growth
Does it also mark the death of love?

A creed of profiteering
Is driven like a callous nail
Through the heart land
Of this Artificial Eden,
With its vast, sprawling kingdoms
Superficial and insidious
Built on the Puritan work ethic
To improve each shining hour

Still falls the cold, stinging rain
On the columns of the stock exchange
Where slick, deranged financiers
Are out of their minds on cocaine

Maggot infested heart
Of the famed 'Big Apple':
Rotten to the core.

Corporate run culture
Air brushed dreams and desires;
Commodity signs abound;
The logo symbolises status;
The divine Logos is now defunct;
The Artificial rules over the Real
Consumers not true citizens,
Only desiring machines.